At least one person has died and more than 20 people are missing after a canoe was rammed by a hippo on the Mtayamoyo River as it passes through Nsanje district in southern Malawi.
The Nsanje Police spokeswoman, Agnes Zalakoma, has indicated that the fatality is a child, before explaining that thirteen people have been rescued and another 23 have been reported missing, as reported by the Times 360 news portal. Malawi.
"Chiromo Police detectives and a rescue team are in the area looking for possible drowning," added the spokeswoman, so it is feared that the number of fatalities from the event may increase in the coming hours.
For her part, the parliamentarian for Nsanje, Gladys Ganda, has expanded the details about the accident in a message on her account on the social network Facebook in which she has revealed that the canoe has been hit by a hippopotamus, which has caused capsize when carrying more than 30 people on board.
"People were crossing the river to the Mozambican loop, where they carry out agricultural activities," he said. "We will have to pray so that the disappeared are rescued," he added after the event, the third of its kind in the last three years.
Ganda herself has explained in statements given to the US radio station Voice of America that Mtayamoyo means death trap in the language of the area. "You cross the river at your own risk, since it is infested with crocodiles and hippos and the canoes that operate in the area are not motorized," she explained.
Likewise, it has stressed that this event could have been avoided with the construction of a bridge over the river. "The Mtayamoyo bridge is something mandatory, it is not a luxury. It is a necessity, we must reduce the number of deaths that take place in this area," she concluded.
Boat accidents are common in this country, where the lack of regular river transport leads many people to cross lakes and rivers in boats that are sometimes in poor condition. Last month, at least five people have already died when an overcrowded boat sank in the central district of Mchinji.
Despite the perception we have of curious and lazy animals, hippos are actually quite dangerous animals for humans. An estimated 500 human deaths at the hands of hippos occur each year in Africa.
The figure is very high and exceeds that of almost any other animal on the planet. In fact, hippos are known as some of the deadliest land animals in the world, with the mosquito being the absolute winner of this competition for a long time.
